There is no licence. There are codes.

“It’s a grey area.” This was the only agreement our panel of experts could reach when discussing operator training.

What prompted the conversation, involving an operator, magazine editor, manufacturer and some bemused onlookers, was the impact of new “equipment grouping codes” by the training body ABA, which came into use on April 1st and define some (but not all) equipment along capacity lines.

This would seem eminently sensible when you consider that the operation of a 20t forklift may be very different indeed to a 1.5t capacity 3 wheel electric, but it throws up some other interesting questions where operators cross from one ABA category to another.

To completely understand what’s going on, there are some important things to understand about training and operator licences. The first being “THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS OPERATOR LICENCES!”

Seriously, they don’t exist. Now before you ask, yes, there are websites that seem to say exactly the opposite, such as: “On successful completion we can issue an RTITB Accredited forklift licence or an In-House forklift licence,” and don’t even get us started on http://forkliftlicence.org.uk/...

The HSE and Fork Lift Truck Association are quite clear, the latter even has a Fact Sheet devoted almost entirely to this non-fact.

Hardly a surprise then that in 2013, the FLTA found 85% of forklift operator recruitment advertisements wrongly stipulated ‘forklift truck licence' or 'forklift licence' as a requirement despite there being no such document in the UK. What there is, is regulation.

Specifically the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 (PUWER) and whilst we are at it, the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999.

According to the HSE, employers have “a general duty under section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 to provide information, instruction, training and supervision to ensure the health and safety of their employees.”

PUWER requires them to ‘ensure that all persons who use work equipment have received adequate training for purposes of health and safety, including training in the methods which may be adopted when using the work equipment, any risks which such use may entail and precautions to be taken’.

The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 also place duties on employers to provide training, so by not providing it, the employer could be breaking the law.

There’s no licence, so there’s no central licence issuing body, but there is an alphabet’s soup of organisations offering guidance. Originally it was the HSE, with the help of the FLTA, and then various training organisations (AITT, ITSSAR, NPORS and RTITB) got together in 2012 to create a new body, ABA. ABA, or the Accrediting Bodies Association Workplace Transport 2012 was conceived to improve standards and bring clarity to accreditation.

Today, most operator training companies will be aligned to one of these ABA members, and these members offer a host of training courses beyond forklifts. Take the RTITB. Formerly the Road Transport Industry Training Board, it provides the means for individuals to train to operate a forklift, but also rough terrain truck, LGV, reach truck or become an instructor. ITSSAR also covers construction plant, crane operation, lifting and rigging operations, and slinging and signalling.

Following the unveiling of the new ABA categories, the codes began to appear on certificates and ID cards issued thereafter. (The full list of equipment names and codes can be found here.)

The list is “just one way that ABA is actively working to make positive changes within the industry and helping to ensure quality, improve safety and drive efficiency for employers, trainers, recruiters and operators,” says ABA Chairman Huw Jones.

You might say that the ABA codes and the ABA membership, are squaring the circle, where an individual cannot be licenced, but where a training course can be ‘accredited’, and therefore the attendee is in some way approved. And yet, there’s another factor to consider, evidence.

Accredited training is externally validated to meet certain requirements in terms of content and legal compliance. It also provides irrefutable evidence of training in the event of an incident. According to Nick Welch, Senior Technical Development Executive for RTITB, this means in-house instructors, regardless of their own training, may be non-compliant.

An experienced in-house instructor may be registered with the appropriate industry bodies, says Nick, but: “this does not mean that the training delivered will be compliant with PUWER Regulation 9 (Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998), which requires companies to provide ‘adequate training’. Accreditation of a company…ensures that the training is compliant with relevant legislation and Codes of Practice.”

Accredited training offers a record of what was covered, the duration and testing. Should they have to, businesses and their employees can prove that high-quality training has been provided and that appropriate safety measures have been taken.

So back to our ABA codes. Why might these new categories cause extra confusion or ‘more grey areas’ as our experts might put it.

“Our sideloaders come in different capacities but have fairly consistent operating parameters,” says Baumann MD, Jason Reynolds. Sideloaders are split into three categories by ABA, C1: Below 5 tonnes capacity, C2: 5-15 tonnes and C3: above 15 tonnes. “Whilst we recognise the need to have the right type of training on the right equipment, suggesting training on a 5t capacity machine is inadequate for a 5.5t machine seems unfair. Add to that the fact that all multi-directional machines, regardless of capacity, are grouped together, and we feel this could unfairly discriminate against trained sideloader operators.”

The irony here is ASA’s existence, and by extension the ASA Codes, were brought about as part of the HSE’s response to Professor Ragnar E Löfstedt’s independent review into Health & Safety Legislation in 2011. In the report, which prompted HSE’s own re-evaluation, the Professor concluded there was no case for radically altering current health and safety legislation.

“In general, the problem lies less with the regulations themselves and more with the way they are interpreted and applied,” says the report. “In some cases this is caused by inconsistent enforcement by regulators and in others by the influences of third parties that promote the generation of unnecessary paperwork and a focus on health and safety activities that go above and beyond the regulatory requirements. Sometimes the legislation itself can contribute to the confusion, through its overall structure, a lack of clarity, or apparent duplication in some areas.”

To some, there’s still some way to go to solving this lack of clarity.

Perhaps, as the RTITB’s Nick Welch concludes, the important thing to remember is that training is never really ‘complete’.

Says Nick: “Operator training is an on-going process that doesn’t just stop at Basic Operator Training, or even Specific Job and Familiarisation Training. When you consider the vital role of ongoing supervision, assessment and Refresher training in maintaining competence you can see that employers and operators alike have an obligation to keep training at the heart of workplace safety.”